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Saturday, November 01, 2014

I recently took part in a group paint-out where over one hundred artists painted live and gave demonstrations on painting in every style, media and subject matter you can imagine. Because I am an indirect painter I have to plan ahead for demonstrations and prepare several different panels showing the different stages of layering in oil.

I began my demo on a panel with my drawing already transferred and ready to be painted. I started by preparing a glaze of yellow ochre over the entire panel and drawing. Next I painted into the lights with opaque white, and added darks and shadows with burnt umber, keeping the shadows thin and transparent.

My second panel for the demonstration had the completed underpainting (above) dry and ready for the next layer of paint. I began again by glazing the panel in transparent color and painting my opaque color into the glaze on the subject matter. Now that I have switched to the first color glaze I still keep my lights opaque and shadows thin and transparent. My values are close together so I can build up more light and shadow after this layer dries with more transparent glazes and opaque scumbles.

After several more passes of transparent glazes and opaque scumbles the painting is complete.

Wednesday, October 08, 2014

This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to study the portrait in charcoal with Teresa Oaxaca. I have been spending a lot of energy this year studying figure drawing and when I heard Teresa was coming to Albuquerque I signed up immediately. In my self-study I had been experimenting with different materials and papers and started to feel frustrated with the time limit in my usual figure drawing group. During the workshop we were only using charcoal and Canson mi-teintes papers and spending a full day on one composition. It was such a luxury to have a so much time to concentrate on each portrait. It was a two day workshop, so the class worked on a new portrait each day.

Here is the model Malia on the first day of the workshop. Teresa started the day with the following demo:

my first day portrait

portrait by Shana Levensen

David Jon Kassan's work for the day.It was such a pleasure to meet so many fantastic artists participating in the drawing session on that first day!

Here is Teresa's work on the second day. Teresa was a wonderful instructor and such a lovely person to meet. She spent the majority of the time circulating the room and offering personal guidance and instruction. She spent as much time with you as you wanted and answered every question with the utmost patience and respect no matter what level an artist you were. Even though I've been painting for fifteen years I felt like a newbie, but by the second day something clicked for me and I felt really focused. I was pleased with the work and happy because I felt like my self-instruction and practice over the year had finally come together. Drawing on weekends and finding time in the evenings was worth it and I will continue to hone my skills during these stolen moments between painting and family.

Friday, April 11, 2014

I finished my first egg tempera painting, "Golden Pear". I chose a simple subject since I had never worked with the medium before. To see the beginnings of this new adventure in painting click Here. In the previous post I have info on my pigments and support. Painting in egg tempera is unlike anything I'd ever tried before. It is thin like watercolor, dries faster than acrylic and looks like oil as you keep layering. For some reason I thought the paints would be transparent, but they were quite opaque so I added more water to make glazes. It was hard to remember that I had to apply the paint thinly--like a whisper of color, and I wasn't able to manipulate the paint at all after it was brushed on. Every stroke showed and after a bit of floundering I realized why crosshatching really works for egg tempera. I started blotting my brush on a paper towel after dipping it in the color to remove excess liquid and then slowly cross hatched across the subject matter and built layers in that manner. When I had struggled with it long enough I left it to dry and then sealed it with shellac. I added a couple oil glazes to brighten it up and give the painting more depth which took no time at all! Usually my glazed oil paintings take weeks to complete because I build up many many layers of paint, this painting took just a few days start to finish. I have plans to start another more detailed painting soon.

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

I am starting a new adventure in painting, egg tempera. As with all things I find an interest in I have been researching, reading and obsessing about this new medium for weeks now, when I learned about the glazing properties and luminous quality of egg tempera I knew I had to try! I also contacted several artists with knowledge about the technique and I can't say enough about the generous nature in which they shared information with me. One artist sent me New Techniques in Egg Tempera by Robert Vickrey via USPS, which was a very good read and quite inspiring. Koo Schadler, master egg tempera painter, sent me several e-mails with detailed information answering my particular concerns about the medium. I am a huge fan of her work and it was amazing to converse with her! I had read several posts by her on various art forums about egg tempera and she is so passionate about painting.

Grinding pigment

I also had a memorable visit at local artist Juan Wijngaard's home and studio. He graciously invited me over to learn about egg tempera, his space is the picture above--his 'daily grind'. We spent the afternoon talking about painting and drawing, viewing amazing artwork and I left feeling so inspired. His studio is a dream, filled with his figurative oil paintings, landscapes and charcoal drawings from life. All the photos here are of his amazing space.

~*~*~Juan Wijngaard's art studio~*~*~

I soon placed an order for dry pigments through Natural Pigments, I use several of their oil paints and knew I would receive the highest quality supplies. There's something about art supplies that I find so luscious, it's hard to describe. When I get a box of paints in the mail I really take my time savoring the new packages and containers. The colors are so beautiful! I also ordered true gesso, a mix of rabbit skin glue and marble dust. I have never used traditional materials to prepare my panels, acrylic based gesso has always worked fine for my oil painting, but I was excited to try out something new and was curious about the different quality of the primer and it's application.

I use regular masonite from the hardware store and always coat it with PVA size to isolate the surface from my primer. These had a coating applied already, they had a slightly tacky feel to them. I'm not sure if it's necessary when using the mixture I was about to apply, which has rabbit skin glue in it already, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. After soaking the gesso, (which was RSG and marble dust together in one mix), I placed the mixture over a pan of hot water which immediately liquified the gel to a milky consistency. As it cools it thickens up quite a bit. It was tricky to apply in smooth even layers. I realized the trick--lots of sanding to create a super smooth plaster-like finish. I felt like I was sanding half of the gesso off, but from what I understand that is normal.

Next I decided to grind all my pigments to prepare them for painting. I saw how Juan kept his in jars with water over the surface to keep them from drying out. Out here in the dry Southwest tempera paints can dry out incredibly quickly. I used distilled water and mixed the pigment until I got a nice smooth consistency. Most of the pigments were already quite smooth, which surprised me. I had expected there to be a grainy texture--hence the 'grinding' to a smooth paste. I breezed through most of the pigments by just using my palette knife and glass palette, then I got to the blues.... I had ordered Prussian blue which was a very fine dust and incredibly grainy. I worked it and worked it on the palette and switched over to my mortar and pestle. It was a disaster, if you think prussian blue invades everything on your palette when painting in oil, try manipulating the dusty particles w/out contaminating your whole studio. It was everywhere, thank goodness I was wearing gloves and a dust mask! I gave up on a getting a smooth paste and moved on to ultramarine blue which was slightly less grainy. Both the blues had a peculiar odor compared to the other natural colors.

Voila!

My basic palette is complete. As soon as my panels cure a few more days I will attempt my first egg tempera painting. I'm nervous about the fast drying time, which is also what attracted me to the medium in the first place. I also read it can be tricky to get the proper proportion of pigment to egg yolk. I'm expecting a challenge but ready to try, we will see what happens! I will post my result soon.